1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to playing videos, and in particular, to a method and apparatus for simultaneously playing a plurality of videos.
2. Description of the Related Art
A portable terminal is a necessity to modern people. That is, people of all ages and both sexes use a portable terminal, and the portable terminal is being used for a voice call and information exchange. In the early times of distribution of portable terminals, a portable terminal was recognized as a simple portable device allowing a wireless call, but along with the development of technologies, the portable terminal now provides various services and functions. For example, the portable terminal in the prior art provides various functions such as an electronic phone book, an electronic game, a short message application, an e-mail application, a reminder function such as a morning call, a music player, a schedule management system, a digital camera, wireless access to networks including the Internet, etc. as a multimedia device.
The portable terminal in the prior art may include a hardware-based decoder for decoding videos (e.g., an MPEG-formatted video, an AVI-formatted video, etc.), and a touch screen for digital-to-analog (D/A) converting decoded videos and displaying the converted videos, thereby replaying videos. Further, a portable terminal in the prior art includes a high performance processor, and thus the portable terminal in the prior art can simultaneously and quickly perform various functions.
The portable terminal in the prior art may simultaneously replay several videos. For example, the portable terminal may detect a preview request event from a touch screen, e.g., activation of a “preview” button tab displayed on a touch screen. In response to the preview request event, the portable terminal performs time division for videos and sequentially decodes the time-divided videos. Thereafter, the portable terminal down-converts the size of decoded videos (i.e., the size displayed on the screen), and temporarily stores the videos in a storage unit. Thereafter, the portable terminal may simultaneously display temporarily stored videos.
However, such a simultaneous replay method requires buffering time (e.g., decoding time), and thus a user may feel uncomfortable with the delay of the replay. In other words, the high performance of the portable terminal in the prior art may not be intuitively shown to the user.